Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? Chickens and Forgotten History

I haven’t watched the Passenger Pigeons/Whiskey vid yet, and it’s not really related (although PP’s were birds), I just didn’t want to lose track of it or forget about it.

Why does the Chicken cross the Road? Because she must.

The Chicken represents Life.
The Road represents Time and Age.
The edges of the Road are really two boundaries of the same plane, as it wrap around the world, forming the Great Unknown.

The Chicken MUST cross the Road, advancing in Age, as she goes.

Roads have a crown, so the first half of her journey is uphill.
When she reaches the dividing line in the center, she has reached middle age; it’s all downhill from there.

She comes from The Great Unknown, crosses, and so returns to The Great Unknown.

Thus, the answer is, because it is an existential imperative.

That was a fun page, thanks.

An added problem is that most of the extant manuscripts date to the Old Babylonian period (c. 18th century BCE), when Sumerian had already died out as a spoken language. In fact, these proverbs were used in the education of scribes to teach them Sumerian, so there is a good chance that some of the punchlines were already 'lost in translation' by the time these manuscripts were written.

Seems like the only thing he could "see" to open would be an eye, or the tavern. Perhaps "dog" was idiomatic for a bar owner, and the proprietor/bartender never sees a thing that's going on in the tavern (or he wouldn't have been in business for long).

I didn't see that one suggested.

“A dog walked into a tavern and said, ‘I can’t see a thing. I’ll open this one’.”

To get the ball!

Outstanding!

Or, it could just be absurdity built on misdirection, like, “what’s got four legs, is green, and would kill you if it fell out of a tree on top of you?” “I give up.” “A pool table.”

0:52 — ‘A dog walked into a tavern and said: “I can’t see a thing. I’ll open this one!”’

The Sumerian Dog Joke That Makes No Sense
23:22
The Histocrat
476K subscribers
232,278 views
September 24, 2023

Hey folks, here’s a quick side video examining the meaning of an old archaeology meme that did the rounds last year! Its deliberately very different from my normal style so I hope you enjoy! Next video will be a normal documentary style episode or a podcast! References/corrections are in the pinned comment below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Em2oAemCng

Dog’s have very poor nighttime eyesight. They depend on their noses to find stuff. Their olfactory receptors are a thousand times more sensitive than a humans.

The dog walked into the bar, which would have been poorly lit with oil lamps, and decided that he would open the door and go in based on his sense of smell.................

I wonder what Warren Zevon would have done with that Sumerian joke? ;^)

Transcript (the AI one)

Intro

If you look outside your window on a nice spring day, you might assume that robins and sparrows are the most numerous birds in the world. But no, not even close. Or could it be, say, pigeons or seagulls? Again, not even close. If you looked it up, you might find note of the red-billed quail, a weaver bird of Sub-Saharan Africa that occurs in astounding numbers and whose population is estimated to exceed a billion. And still, it is not the most numerous bird on earth. If you even went back in time to the passenger pigeon, the most numerous wild species ever found, it had a population estimated to exceed five billion. It would not even come close to the most numerous bird on earth today: Gallus gallus domesticus. And how the bird that most of us simply know as the chicken came to be the most numerous bird on earth is a history that deserves to be remembered.

The Exact Domestication

The story of the domestication of the chicken is not completely clear, as domesticated birds have interbred with wild birds. The DNA story is muddled. Most scholars agree that the chicken was domesticated from the wild red jungle fowl, a member of the pheasant family that still exists in large parts of Southeast Asia today, although the species is threatened by hybridization with domestic chickens.

However, genes of a similar gray jungle fowl found on the Indian subcontinent have been identified in modern breeds of domesticated chicken as well, leading some scientists to suggest that chickens may have been domesticated in multiple domestication events in areas of South Asia and China. The domestication might have occurred as far back as eight to ten thousand years ago, and from Asia, domesticated chickens spread to the Middle East and Africa, where chickens had an advantage over local guinea fowl, which had the tendency to fly away. Europe and Oceania saw chickens only thought to have come to the Americas after contact with Europe. However, there is some evidence that there were chickens in South America in the pre-Columbian era, supporting the still somewhat controversial theory that there was contact in the Americas with Polynesian peoples.

Surprisingly, most scientists agree that the original domestication of chickens was done for the purpose of cockfighting, not for eggs or meat. Male chickens, called cocks, have a natural aggression towards one another and have a sharp spur on their heel that they use to attack. Chickens bred for the purpose of fighting are called gamecocks and are selected for strength and stamina. Fights are sometimes used as a form of ritual sacrifice, and fighting represents fertility. The sport, which often included wagering alongside religious and cultural elements, spread from the Indus Valley to Greece and Rome and is depicted in ancient mosaics. The fighting chickens would be placed in a shallow depression that would serve as their ring, where they would fight, and that was called a cockpit, as the controls of a ship, where the pilot might steer the ship, were often placed in an open well on the deck. It resembled the cockpit, and so came to be known as the cockpit. That term, which refers to where the controls of the vessel are, was eventually carried over to aircraft, where the spot that controlled the aircraft was called a cockpit, and also to racecars.

Utility

Although now banned in many parts of the world, the sport continues both legally and illegally throughout the world. It might be the world’s oldest continuously played sport. Despite this use, the utility of domesticated chickens as a food source is obvious. They produce food both in the form of eggs and meat. They require relatively few resources to maintain, foraging readily on insects and food scraps. They are poor fliers and relatively easily confined and protected in cages at night. They are easily portable on boats and ships, and relative to larger domesticated animals, they provide a single meal rather than leaving the problem of safely storing the excess food from a slobbering cow or a goat. Eggs are also easier to preserve and transport than milk. Relative to wild birds, domesticated chickens are less aggressive, grow larger, and produce larger eggs earlier and more frequently.

If chickens were domesticated for the purpose of cockfighting, it is clear that the domesticated breeds were developed as a source of food. Chickens came somewhat late to Egypt, given its long history, but Egypt produced a new technology in chicken cultivation that awed the ancient world: egg incubators. So significant were they that they were mentioned by Aristotle, who incorrectly supposed that the incubation was done by burying the eggs in dung. The Egyptians were reportedly protective of the secrets of their incubation ovens, which allowed chickens to be produced faster and more reliably. If hens are used to incubate eggs using the natural process, the hen will stop laying for a period. But if the eggs are instead removed and artificially incubated, the hen will produce more eggs. Incubators also allow chickens to be incubated year-round, whereas chickens in colder climates could not generally keep eggs warm enough to produce chicks in the winter months.

Despite Europeans knowing of the Egyptian incubators at the time of the ancient Greeks, the operation of the ovens, which set the eggs in baskets at a chamber below a higher chamber where a smoldering fire was maintained, was not clearly understood and described by Europeans until French scientist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur gained access to the ovens and described their methods in 1750. The process required skilled handlers who maintained the fires and turned the eggs. Wood is relatively rare in Egypt, so these smoldering fires kept in dome-shaped chambers allowed smoke to escape while keeping rain out. They usually used the more common Egyptian fuel of dried dung, which was likely the genesis of Aristotle’s misconception about the eggs being buried in dung. Herschel produced his own design for an egg incubator, but the colder European climates required more robust fuel, and a practical modern egg incubator was not invented until coal lamp incubators were perfected in the 1800s.

Chickens and eggs were popular in ancient Rome, where the omelet was invented. At one point, the fattening of chickens was prohibited in Rome, and the eating of chicken was limited to one per meal in order to preserve supplies of wheat. The response was to invent the capon, a castrated rooster, which can grow up to twice its normal size. Chicken was one of the more common proteins in medieval Europe, where larger animals could be prohibitively expensive, while chickens were relatively inexpensive to acquire and keep. Archaeologists noted a significant increase in chicken bones in the archaeological record starting about 900 to 1000 AD. Historians have proposed a number of reasons for the sudden increase in chicken consumption in the medieval period, including increasing urbanization and standards of living.

But the largest driving factor may have been religious practice. Benedictine monks of the period started enforcing rules around religious fasting that included a prescription against the meat of four-legged animals, but which allowed the meat of birds and eggs. As there were at the time around 130 fasting days a year in common Christian practice, chicken and eggs quickly grew in popularity as favorite proteins. In fact, an Oxford University study in 2017 of chicken bones from the high medieval period found that their DNA was rapidly altering during the period as people were selecting for larger, less aggressive species that produce more and larger eggs. Thus, Christian feasting practices in Europe literally changed the very genetic structure of domesticated chickens.

Symbolism

And if it seems strange that religion affected chickens, understand that the symbolic importance of chickens was not at all new. As previously mentioned, cockfighting had both religious and cultural elements, but the symbolism of chickens goes much farther than that. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in the coming of spring in pagan rituals long before the tradition of hiding Easter eggs was described by Christians as being symbolic of Jesus’s emergence from the tomb and resurrection. The Persian religion of Zoroastrianism saw the crowing rooster as symbolic of a turning point in the cosmic struggle between dark and light. On the Chinese zodiac, people born in the year of the rooster are supposed to be perfectionists who are critical, egotistical, but also practical, loyal, and organized.

In Norse mythology, three roosters crowing signaled the coming of Ragnarok, the end of times, and multiple religions use roosters in divination, a practice called aleuromancy. In the Japanese Shinto religion, the rooster is associated with the goddess Amaterasu, goddess of the Sun. In Islam, the rooster is considered one of the three voices that are beloved by Allah, saying, “When you hear the crowing of a rooster, ask for Allah’s blessing, for they have seen an angel.” The Gospels of the Christian New Testament tell the story of Jesus telling Peter that before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. Thus, the rooster can be seen as nefarious, but as the rooster crowing led Peter to repent, it is also seen as a symbol of grace and forgiveness. The rooster is therefore the symbol of St. Peter, and in the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a rooster should be placed atop all churches as a reminder of Peter’s denial of Christ. Not only does the rooster still adorn the top of many European churches, but Nicholas’s decree started the tradition of placing roosters on weathervanes.

Chickens and their behavior have become intimately connected to culture and have permeated language. The Khalsa, when a chicken is to call them a coward, is a term that may date back to the 14th century. Versions of the story about the chicken named Chicken Little or Henny Penny, referring to a character who mistakenly believes a disaster is imminent, go back as much as 25 centuries. “Chicken feed” is an idiom going back to the 19th century that means “small amount.” A politician promising prosperity may promise “a chicken in every pot,” a phrase that, while used in the 1928 U.S. presidential campaign, actually dates back at least to English King Henry IV.

If a person’s bad deeds come back to them, it is said that their “chickens have come home to roost.” If the flavor of an unusual food is difficult to describe, it is said to “taste like chicken.” If something is crooked, it is “cockeyed.” If a man cannot defend himself from a sharp-tongued wife, he is said to be “henpecked,” a reference to the fact that chickens themselves will establish an order within their community that is called a “pecking order,” a term that is applied to any recognition of status within a group. A particularly attentive mother or matronly figure is called a “mother hen,” and if that woman is depressed that her children have grown, she is said to have “empty nest syndrome.”

A leader who bullies people is called “the cock of the walk,” referring to a fighting chicken whose pen was called a “walk.” If you are barely making enough money to make ends meet, you are like a chicken scratching out a living, and if you’re able to set some aside, then that is your “nest egg.” If you can set quite a lot aside, then you are “feathering your nest.” If you place too much faith in one investment, you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and if you’re planning how to spend an investment before it produces returns, you are “counting your eggs before they are hatched.” If something is particularly difficult to find, it is as scarce as “hen’s teeth,” and if it gets away, it has “flown the coop.” For letting it go, you might be called a “birdbrain.” If a person is particularly irascible, they may be called “hard-boiled,” and if they are disorganized, they are “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” If they back out on a promise, they are said to “chicken out,” and a person who does that might be called a “bad egg.”

If they’ve seen better days, they might say that they are “no spring chicken.” When putting a plan into motion, you’re “hatching an idea,” and if the plan succeeds, you have something to “crow” about. But if that plan fails, you might wind up with “egg on your face.” If something makes you particularly angry and you can’t let it go, it is “stuck in your craw.” The story cannot be believed is a “cock-and-bull story.” If you’re in need of a joke, try asking, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” And if you want to befuddle someone, ask them, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Conclusion

As food, chicken is among the most ubiquitous foods in the world, part of almost any cuisine that includes meat. Worldwide, some 55 million chickens are eaten every day, but that was not always the case. In 19th century America, chickens were mostly used for eggs, making chicken meat rare and used for special occasions and favored by the rich. The discovery of a way to synthesize vitamin D in the 1920s improved chicken production, as it allowed chickens to thrive during winter, and improvements in breeding increased production through the 1930s. Eventually, large-scale production vastly increased the amount of chicken available. During the Second World War, meat and cheese were rationed in the United States, which was not only providing for its vastly expanded military but helping to serve the needs of allies and liberated countries devastated by war. However, poultry, eggs, and fresh milk were not rationed, and consumption of poultry skyrocketed in America.

In the 1990s, chicken surpassed beef as the most popular meat in Europe, launched into the fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease. In the United States, as drought had reduced beef stock and driven up prices versus poultry, in 2015, Americans consumed an average of 92 pounds of chicken per person a year, a record, and the country produced about 90 billion eggs. The worldwide trend is nothing short of extraordinary. Eric Dorfman, director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, did some math based on statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and determined that in 2016, some 66 billion chickens were produced in the world, nearly nine for every human on earth. Just as shocking, however, is that just 55 years earlier, in 1961, that number was just 7.4 billion chickens, or about one chicken for every 400 people on earth.

And while chicken and poultry production faces certain obstacles including questions of food safety and treatment of the animals, especially in the industrialized setting, chicken is going to continue to be a larger and larger part of the human food supply. Chicken is a relatively healthy form of protein with relatively lower amounts of saturated fat than alternatives and including important nutrients like the antioxidant selenium. Chicken is also relatively efficient to produce; it takes about 2 pounds of feed to produce a pound of chicken, whereas it takes about 7 pounds of feed to produce a pound of beef and 3 pounds of feed to produce a pound of pork. Chicken and eggs also release relatively low amounts of CO2 per gram of protein.

And if chicken is going to continue to be a big part of humanity’s future, it is a surprising part of the world’s past. In 2007, scientists were able to determine the chemical composition of proteins that were found inside a 68 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex bone, and what they found was, and I quote, “remarkably similar to chickens,” suggesting that chickens are the animal on this earth that is most similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and of course suggesting that Tyrannosaurus Rex tasted like chicken.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The History Guy: short snippets of forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long. If you did enjoy, please go ahead and click that thumbs up button. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, please write those in the comment section; I will be happy to personally respond. Be sure to follow The History Guy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and check out our merchandise on Teespring.com. And if you’d like more episodes on forgotten history, all you need to do is subscribe.

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